


Northwest Passage

by ClockworkCourier



Category: The Magnus Archives (Podcast)
Genre: Cannibalism, Canon Compliant, Canon-Typical Violence, Franklin Expedition, Immortality, MAG 133, Originally Posted on Tumblr, Slightly adjacent to AMC's The Terror, The Everchase
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-03-03
Updated: 2020-03-03
Packaged: 2021-02-23 01:30:27
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,526
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23003605
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ClockworkCourier/pseuds/ClockworkCourier
Summary: The Franklin Expedition disappears into the Arctic, leaving behind human debris.The Franklin Expedition keeps walking. It will never stop.
Comments: 5
Kudos: 20





	Northwest Passage

**Author's Note:**

> And if you look closely, you can see me slapping my academic niche onto my current love of TMA. (tbh hearing that the Expedition was mentioned was what got me into TMA in the first place ;D) Kind of my interpretation of some of the events leading to MAG 133.
> 
> Everyone mentioned in this fic is a very real person, with Thomas Hartnell having a special place in my heart.

Tom doesn’t understand what possesses the men he sails with. Some of them have such a _want_ ; such a _craving_ and a _desire_ that he cannot fathom, what with his simple daily tasks and basic training. He sees it, sometimes, when he’s tying off ropes or painting or tarring. He sees their _hunger_ , spies it when they look out at where the sea is caked in ice, threatening the end of a cold summer. Out beyond the grey mountains and glaciers, the knife points of broken ice, the strange creatures, the dancing lights that curtain the stars, he knows they see the Northwest Passage. They see it so _clearly_ that they’re blind to what’s in front of them now.

He sees a job. He sees chores and things that years in the Navy have taught him to do. 

Of course, he also wants things. Everyone does. Tom wants to make it through the expedition in one piece, whether it end in the Sandwich Islands or England if they have to turn tail. He wants to collect his double pay, count it out from his hands to his mother’s, and feel safe and warm again before the next set of sails and ropes entices him back to the sea. 

And once, he wanted adventure. He wouldn’t have had the thought to sign onto _Erebus_ if there wasn’t some part of him that craved it. It didn’t capture his senses the way it does for some of the men, but there _was_ a thrill that ran a gauntlet through his heart when he saw something _truly_ strange, like the auroras or the twirled horns of narwhals peeking up through the ice. Sometimes, he would eagerly run down to the orlop after his watch ended and pen out a quick letter to his sisters, his brother, his mother, or his cousins—just hurried observations of the Arctic and how different it was from Gillingham. 

He _wanted_ adventure. The past tense is deliberate and fierce. He _wanted_ , because the only reason it was ever in the present tense at all is now buried under six feet of frozen gravel some two hundred miles north. If he must want something presently, he wants his brother back from the dead.

No, he doesn’t understand the men who seek the Passage like hounds on a scent. What’s the use of wanting something you’re not meant to have?

\- - -

They freeze in for the second summer in a row. The sun kisses the horizon, pressing rosy lips to grey shale and pink ice—then draws back up into a powder blue sky to wink above them _._

That’s when people start to disappear.

First, it’s Sir John. He dies in June—or so Tom’s told. He apparently dies in the night, long after the dog watches take place. Captain Crozier tells the men that they’ll be burying Sir John right away, but Commander— no, _Captain_ Fitzjames’ face is fixed peculiarly when the announcement is made. _Dreadfully ill,_ Crozier tells them. _He can’t be seen._

It doesn’t make sense. Many of the ABs echo the sentiment, but the mates and lieutenants are quick to quash their concerns. The burial is hasty, committing a simple wooden box to the gravel with only a large stone to mark the grave itself. This strikes Tom as stranger than all the Arctic’s oddest traits combined. His brother, a lowly able-bodied seaman, was afforded more decorum than Sir John Franklin. 

More disappear after that. Fairholme and Osmer apparently die on a hunting expedition. Aylmore, Goddard, and Kinnaird aren’t far behind, disappearing into that sun-soaked horizon with only whispers left behind. 

Reddington makes the oddest display before his disappearance; honestly, he’s the best hint to Tom that something very, _very_ strange is happening. The night before he goes missing, he wakes half the ship up with a maniacal laugh, practically screaming in pure incoherence before Lieutenant Le Vesconte drags him into the Wardroom, presumably to calm him. Le Vesconte opens the door only once to ask for Captain Fitzjames and a glass of brandy before he shuts them both in and the screaming starts again. All Tom can catch is the howl of, “ _It’s there! It’s there! I’ve seen it!”_ before Fitzjames arrives.

The next morning, Reddington is gone. Fitzjames says he broke loose and ran off after the second dog watch, presumably having gone mad.

A few days later, Crozier says they’re going to abandon ship and begin a long walk south.

\- - -

The craving begins in September, Tom thinks. 

If there even _is_ such thing as September.   
  
In his mind, it’s The Craving, titled like a book. In this book, he thinks the plot would be about men so far gone in their hunger that all the humanity in them decays to nothing, leaving them crazed husks searching for the impossible. At this point, what with men falling into the stones and dying halfway through the descent, he feels they shouldn’t _be_ like this. They should be tending their wounded and ill, making camp more often. But The Craving is in Crozier’s eyes, dragging them further and further towards… _something._

Tom doesn’t think they’re looking for the Passage anymore.

He follows along, as he always has. Ever the seaman, now ever the AB, following orders from a boatswain with lips scarred from his whistle freezing to the flesh and tearing away. 

Then, The Craving gets carnal when their last food stores begin to dwindle. Tom barely notices, watching as if in a dream as the man who used to be Daniel Arthur cracks marrow out of a bone, greedily clawing it out of the hollows with his frostbitten fingers. He eats like an animal and stops only when they begin to move again. 

Tom doesn’t eat with them. Every time he thinks of it, his mind plays some terrible trick. He thinks of John, entombed in ice and rock, emaciated and torn open like an animal was the one who pried his ribs from his body, and not a _surgeon._ He thinks of what _John’s_ marrow would taste like, and imagines his brother watching him, eyes unfocused behind the mists of death, jaw unhinged in that silent scream of a corpse— _judging_ him.  
  
 _Tommy_ , he thinks John would say. _Always stealing off my plate, huh?_

He doesn’t eat. When the hunger saws at his stomach with iron teeth, he bites his hands, his lips, the wool from his coat, the copper-tasting metal of his buttons. He swallows snow until he vomits. 

And somehow, impossibly, he lives on.

\- - -

There are no days.

No weeks.

No months.

Maybe years, but Tom’s stopped counting.

There are only steps, one after another. There are bloody footprints thousands of miles behind them. They abandoned the sledges back in the snow and gravel, leaving useless cargo and a trail of broken bodies. Men still die, but there seems to be no real reason why they do. Tom should have been dead… ten? Twenty? _Fifty_ years ago? He can’t remember. All he knows is that he’s still walking, following behind Crozier and Fitzjames and a dwindling party of men still dressed for the Arctic weather.

They’re in a desert.

_Surely_ they should have found the Passage by now? Tom thinks this as he sees a lizard scurry up a strange plant, spiked like a well-used pincushion. The sun bites his blistering flesh, scrapes its glowing teeth along the back of his neck. Still, he’s never felt the need to take off his slops. There’s something comforting about the What Was, after all.  
  
Why is he here? He doesn’t Crave the way the others do. They always talk about the Passage. It’s over _that_ hill, surely. It’s along _this_ river. If we just walk over _there_ , it will be within sight. He knows it won’t be. It never is.

So why does he walk?

_Because you Want_ , something tells him. It’s a deep, odd thing set in his soul, prone to ring out when struck like a bell, reminding him that he Must Always Walk.

For what?

_For the Wanting,_ it says. _And what do you Want, Thomas Hartnell?_

Somewhere beyond a flat-topped mountain the colour of blood and bile, he thinks about that question. What does he Want?

He wants his mother to kiss his forehead and tell him good night. He wants Charlie to take apart their father’s pocket watch and put it back together, just in time to proudly show it to Tom. He wants to hear Mary Ann sing old shanties while she kneads dough on Friday morning. He wants to sit at the base of an apple tree while Betsy throws down the fruit, giggling as she does so.

He wants John to come back from the dead.

He wants to go _home_.  
  
 _And Home is over that next mountain,_ says The Craving. Tom looks up at another blood-red mountain, the winking sun digging its teeth into the throat of stone. _Don’t you want to see it again? Gillingham? Kent? The River and the Sea?_

Of course he does, but it isn’t—

Well, _maybe_ it is.

So Tom Wants, and he Craves, and he Walks.

**Author's Note:**

> [Tumblr](http://radiojamming.tumblr.com)


End file.
